Monday, February 14, 2011

Dan Schmidt Goes on Camera. Dan Schmidt, president of WTTW-TV, your Window to the Left, has done a paid-by-you commercial which runs regularly urging viewers-like-you to write the Congress to protest the demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by GOP appropriators which would dam up the trough of public dollars going to his television station. Which would mean his russet-haired aging radical feminist Carol Marin who gets two other paychecks in addition to WTTW’s would be severely limited in using her “special correspondent’s” status to serve as ring-bearer for gay marriage…or for attacking an authenticist Catholic bishop because he had the temerity to criticize Pat Quinn for misuse of church theology to endorse civil unions. I hugely enjoyed Schmidt trembling in his $2,000 suit as he worried aloud that the taxpayer-paid welcome wagon for Lefty cultural bias which has paid him so well can be ending. The idea of this public subsidy for the already over-privileged largely white, affluent Wilmette-to-Winnetka audience, started with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. It swiftly became a vehicle for liberaldom to propagandize voters. Schmidt’s argument is that private funds can’t adequately raise money for his ideological wares. He’s right. The market for the left-wing culture wars is not there in this era of recession and cut-back. What Schmidt should do is to study the case-history the Moody Bible Church which privately funds its radio services here…or better yet that of Mother Angelica…sorry to bring up religious belief to spoil the day for this secular-loving, over-paid executive…but Angelica started a powerfully influential TV network from scratch which her successors keep it going with 100% private contributions. But Schmidt knows 100% private funding would tend to eliminate the highly topic of homosexual “rights” about which on the public dole he’s been getting away with murder for years with no alternative view expressed. Viewers have beseeched Know Nothing marketer Schmidt for years to end the steady drone of homosexual advocacy on his station…or at least balance it with traditional views—to no effect. The latest was Chicago Tonight chief host Cardboard Man who interviewed the aptly-named Dan Savage, nationally syndicated gay columnist who instructs his readers what sex toys to buy for their under-age children. Earlier Marin who touts her “Catholic” affiliation…heretical as it is… interviewed State Rep. Deb Mell (D-Chicago) the self-outed lesbian lawmaker and her plans to travel to Iowa to marry her female lover—Marin fondling Mell’s “wedding ring” on TV….also in another media venue Marin turned rhetorically weepy over Daley’s public school superintendent who with another guy was planning to adopt a child. It’s an outrage to see this station and its cast of liberal propagandists mock Judeo-Christian values without the slightest inclination to bring in another side—courtesy senior producer Mary Field….but doing it on public largesse is misuse of federal monies approximating secular sacrilege. I for one will be terribly disappointed in the Republican House majority if in slashing $100 billion out of the budget it doesn’t eliminate all federal money for public TV and radio which had no place in the budget either in good economic times or bad. Finally--don’t think I write this because secretly I yearn to get back on as I had frequently in the halcyon days of the late great lamented John Callaway. This octogenarian enjoys the venues he has, having already turned down one invitation as token, telling `em to forget it for the future. Besides when you get on under the aegis of Schmidt, Field, Cardboard Man and Nurse Ratched you end up on a panel weighted 4-to-1 against you with “moderator”Ratched saying “hold that thought”…after which when she returns with 16 seconds left she asks you sweetly “—apart from that, what do you think?”

2 comments:

I remember when WTTW had a blog where readers could post their thoughts on the station. I thought for sure the Chicago Tribune article a few years ago would do him in. (excessive pay, marble foyers, leased autos, etc...)

I guess not. What a fool I am. I didn't think Chicago Tonight could go any lower than it did when Bob Sirott hosted the show.

Boy was I wrong...

Anyway, they've not received a penny from me since then and they will never draw a penny from me until WTTW is shuttered and reopened under new leadership.

About Tom

Thomas F. Roeser is radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher and former VP of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. A former John F. Kennedy Fellow, Harvard and Woodrow Wilson International Fellow, Princeton, N. J., Roeser is theauthor of the book Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott. To read more about Tom, Click here.